Perfect Day
by WinterOfOurDiscontent
Summary: Some days are bad. Some days are worse. Then there was today, which pretty much argued for a new scale altogether. Featuring Umino Iruka and one rather horrid day. Chapter two: Kakashi's turn.
1. Chapter 1

_For JBMcDragon, in honour of her birthday. (and about a week early, too.)_

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Some days are bad. Some days are worse. Then there was today, which pretty much argued for a new scale altogether.

The only thing stopping it from registering on the top ten list (Iruka was by nature a maker of lists. He was also by nature an ignorer of said lists once he'd made them, but he found the process reassuring.) was that, well… it wasn't as if the village had been attacked, or someone he knew was dead… it wasn't a _depressing_ day, it was just a _shitty_ day.

It started out as one of those can't-sleep-so-when-you-finally-do-you-oversleep, so then-you're-late-to-work-and-because-you're-rushed-you-forgot-everything-anyway mornings. It then morphed into an all-the-students-have-apparently-been-fed-glucose-as-part-of-a-rival-village's-plot-to-destroy-Konoha day. Half the class had detentions before lunchtime, and he'd have given the other half ones as well only he'd suddenly realized that since he'd have to sit through those detentions too, he would really only be punishing himself.

He'd gone to run his hands through his hair in sheer frustration around ten when his hair band had suddenly snapped, and of course a spare band was one of the things he'd forgotten in the mad rush out the door this morning. Which meant spending the rest of the day with his hair down, and it kept falling in his eyes despite his best and repeated efforts to keep it tucked behind his ears.

By noon, his stomach and his voice were competing over which could growl the loudest, since, of course, he'd had to skip breakfast as well as his usual morning cup of green tea, with its dosage of blessed, blessed caffeine. But since he'd missed a teacher meeting this morning, he had to spend lunchtime playing catch-up on files, records, and the afternoon lesson plan.

Around one, Iruka's class had been interrupted by loud noises from outside. Iruka had had to open the window and belt out that if Gai-sensei wanted to live to reach the Summer of his Youth, he'd shut the hell up while Iruka was trying to teach.

It was quieter after that.

Of course, the afternoon shuriken throwing practice the class had been looking forward to all week resulted in the loss of one good pair of Iruka's pants. He didn't have a spare set in the office at present, since he'd had to use his last emergency pair a week ago. The wound itself was a shallow slice that didn't need stitches but stung like hell when he moved. …or when he stood still.

He'd never been so grateful to tell the little brats they were dismissed.

"Iruka-sensei?"

Iruka looked up from his angry and moderately painful trudge home. If the jounin hadn't said anything he'd have walked into him.

"Kakashi-sensei," Iruka acknowledged. "Can I do something for you?" he added, in a 'I'm-in-a-bad-mood-so-please-don't-give-me-a-reason-to-have-to-kill-you' tone of voice.

"Actually…" Kakashi's visible eye smiled. Which probably should have annoyed him… how dare anyone else be in a good mood after the day he'd had…but somehow, didn't. "You look like you're having a bad day. Care to go out for some food? My treat."

Iruka's stomach growled, but the rest of him felt unaccountably better.

And as they sat down to a dinner that was emphatically Not Ramen, Iruka decided that maybe today wasn't so bad.

Now if he could just maneuver Gai-sensei into taking over his detentions… it'd be a great day.

"You look good with your hair down, Iruka-sensei."

Scratch that. Today was _perfect_.


	2. Not So Bad Day

Genius jounin do not have bad days. They have horrific days of seemingly endless slaughter, they have dreadful missions that test the very limits of their endurance… but they do not have _bad days_, which sound distinctly like something genin have that involves going home and crying to one's mother.

Kakashi did not have a mother, but he did have genin. And that meant those genin were sent on a variety of menial D-class missions designed to both raise their endurance and hone their emerging skills as well as teaching them valuable lessons about teamwork, patience, and following orders. Personally Kakashi figured that, while all of this was true, it was also true that the council were a bunch of evil, twisted old men and women who thought it was funny to torture genin. But, since he kinda agreed, he didn't say anything about it.

It was also true, though not known except by a select few, that the council, being composed of a bunch of old farts, had lots of tasks around their house they no longer wanted to do themselves, including yardwork, animal care, cleaning… and that the council had written into the laws ages ago that they were allowed to request D class missions free of charge.

Right now, though, he was of half a mind to tell those old fogeys that they could walk their own damn dogs and weed their own gardens from now on, while he went and killed off a rival village or something.

He wasn't _going to_, of course. But he wanted to.

And he still smelled like fish. Gyah. Most people hate smelling like fish, but Kakashi had a better sense of smell than most, and he _really_ hated smelling like fish.

He smelled like fish, and muck, and the bits inside of fish, and various things that had been dead a while. He hadn't gotten as covered in it as the rest of Team Seven had, but it was still more than enough.

The parts of his body where the muck was beginning to dry on him felt stiff and itchy, and he was pretty sure that his sandals hadn't made that squelching noise before.

He wasn't the teacher that, say, Iruka-sensei was, but he did know that it was bad form to kill one's students, which put him above and away beyond the Orochimaru teaching method. So he'd just sent his kids home (to be fair, Naruto and Sasuke looked like strange creatures from the deep, and you could no longer tell that Sakura's hair was pink) with injunctions to shower as soon as humanly possible and using as much soap as was needed, and to spend tomorrow training as punishment for not following orders today.

He, of course, was going to go home, shower (he'd never been so thankful this wasn't the Country of Wind, because this was going to take a LOT of water) and read Icha Icha until he could forget today had happened. And that meant that right now he was trudging through the streets of Konoha, (rooftop travel was _so_ not a viable option right now) visible eye looking even more dour than usual.

People seemed to be giving him an extra wide berth today, though that could have just been his imagination. Except for one chuunin who was heading straight for him. Great. Of all the people he didn't particularly care to be seen by while looking like this…

"Iruka-sensei. Yo."

"Kakashi-sensei. I sme… saw you coming this way and thought I'd say hello." Iruka-sensei looked nice. Whether this was because he always looked nice, or because in comparison with Kakashi right now, the rest of the world looked even better… "You look like you've had a long day."

"Long story. I was on my way to the mission desk, but the report will have to be…" He shrugged, indicating that, as the report was in much the same shape as he was, it would thus probably require cleaning, fumigation, bleaching, disinfecting, or at the very least a good dose of a strong perfume and a few hours of drying before it would be safe to turn in.

Iruka-sensei, as a dedicated mission desk worker, grimaced slightly. "Well then… it's for a D-class mission, I'm sure tomorrow will be soon enough. He looked at Kakashi again, and Kakashi thought he could detect a trace of… amusement? in the chuunin's eyes. "In the meantime, would you like to go out for a few drinks this evening? …After you've changed clothes," _and scrubbed off the top layer of skin…_ "of course."

"I, uh…" and then Iruka smiled at him in a friendly manner, and whatever objections he had been about to raise were forgotten. "Yeah, sure."

"Meet me at the Satorimoto Bar at, say, eight? Will that give you enough time to clean up?"

"Yeah, that should be fine." If he sprinted. He could sprint.

"I'll see you then, Kakashi-sensei." And Iruka-sensei turned to head back to wherever he'd been going before he'd decided to take pity on a smelly, disgruntled jounin. "Oh, and Kakashi-sensei?" he called back, over his shoulder.

"Eh?"

"Don't be late."

Eh, maybe it wasn't such a bad day.

_Squelch_.

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A/N. The name of the bar loosely translates to "The origin of understanding/enlightenment."

I didn't plan to do another oneshot, but inspiration struck… I may end up doing more in this series.

This chapter is dedicated to lareinenoire and catspaw18. With love.


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